Destroy the Day by Brigid Kemmerer

Author:Brigid Kemmerer [Kemmerer, Brigid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781547613243
Published: 2023-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Harristan

I’ve never been an early riser, but this morning I’m awake when the first beams of sunlight strike the shutters. The fire has gone to embers, and the room is cool, silence pressing in from outside. Quint’s body is a warm weight against mine, his breath soft against my arm. The world outside this tiny house is full of living nightmares, and I have so many obligations waiting for me. I’m dreading every single one of them. I’d rather spend my morning memorizing the lines of his face.

I was worried that dawn would come and I would feel awkward. Uncertain. That I would want to slip out of bed, grateful for an excuse to leave.

Instead, all my emotions are just the opposite. Quint has been a part of my life for years, so there’s a strange sort of comfort here. Like the moment I kissed him, what’s truly startling about this is that it’s somehow . . . not startling at all.

And now that I’ve let down my walls, my carefully constructed barriers, the fortress I’ve built around my emotions, I’m having a hard time remembering how to put them back up. This is terrifying. Exhilarating. Last night, I couldn’t stop touching him. I’m longing to touch him now.

He was writing down the dates when I smiled. Good lord. It’s the most insane thing I’ve ever heard. If I’d ever found out, he wouldn’t have lasted one more second in the palace.

But then he gave me that whole speech about my brother and my parents and the whole of Kandala and—oh, I simply cannot take it.

Wake up, I think. Wake up and drive me crazy.

He doesn’t. His breath keeps tickling my arm, his chest rising and falling slowly. I watch for far too long, mesmerized.

I run a hand across my face. I should get dressed. There’s work to be done. Francis has Sommer bound somewhere, and I need to question him this morning. Saeth will give me a report on whatever his wife knows. There’s a chance that the closest consuls will be receiving their letters by now, too. The entire country is at stake, and I’m in bed.

But Quint’s hair is tousled from sleep, his jaw dusted in red from the start of a beard he hasn’t shaved since we moved to the Wilds. I remember the feel of it against my face, against my neck, against my chest, against . . . other places. I thought it would be rough, but it’s not at all.

Without thinking, I stroke a thumb across the velvet softness of his cheek, and he stirs, inhaling deeply.

“Do you need me to make more tea?” he says, barely awake. He made a pot sometime in the dead of night when I woke with a coughing fit. I tried to muffle the sound with a pillow, but he heard anyway.

“No,” I murmur. “Go back to sleep.”

His eyes crack open the tiniest bit, and when he sees that I’m not coughing, he stretches, then rises up enough to kiss me lazily.

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